The present disclosure generally relates to methods for inducing cellular or hormonal changes, and more specifically, to methods using sound waves for inducing cellular or hormonal changes.
Obesity is a pandemic. Over the last decade, the prevalence of diabetes has followed the obesity trend. Currently, the cost of providing medical care and treatment to obese and diabetic patients is costly, at more than $100 billion per year. Medical treatment includes physician and hospital costs, insurance (both private insurance and government subsidized), and pharmaceutical research and development.
A variety of obesity treatments exist. However, noninvasive treatments, such as medications, can generally only induce less than a 10% reduction in weight. Thus, these noninvasive treatments have largely failed. While invasive treatments, such as bariatric surgery, are more effective in inducing a substantially greater weight loss, they are nonetheless risky and costly.
Some minimally invasive treatment options control appetite. Enhancing satiety results in reduced food consumption and weight loss. Procedures to induce gastric distention, or to prevent gastric emptying, induce satiety. When gastric emptying is prevented, isotonic saline is comparable to a liquid diet in reducing desire for food intake. Balloons used to induce gastric distention can induce feelings of satiety and satiety-related brain activation. These treatments indicate that satiety may be induced by mechanical stimuli.
Hormones are involved in weight regulation. Various hormones, for example, leptin, gherlin, cholecystokinin (CCK), and pancreatic peptide YY3-36 (PYY3-36), regulate food intake by interacting with or binding to mechanoreceptors dispersed along the gastrointestinal tract.
Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is an invasive treatment for satiety induction. VNS therapy, which originally was an epileptic treatment, involves implanting electrodes to electrically stimulate various regions of the brain. Although animal studies demonstrate decreased food intake and weight loss, human studies may demonstrate less favorable results. Human studies provide contradictory reports in retrospective analysis of epilepsy patients.
Gastric pacing is another invasive intervention for inducing satiety. A gastric pacemaker is implanted under the skin to deliver electrical stimulation to the stomach. The pacemaker senses naturally-occurring electrical activity of the stomach and automatically applies electrical stimulation treatment during meal times. The stimulation during initial stages of meals is designed to provoke an early response of the gut typical of a full meal.